11 Ways To Occupy If You Have to Work on May Day

Not everyone who supports the Occupy Movement is going to be able to skip work or school for the General Strike on Tuesday. Some might not be able to avoid shopping. Others are going to need to use an ATM or wash the dishes. Life isn’t stopping on May Day, but the key to a successful action is avoiding an all-or-nothing attitude. Anything you can not do on May Day counts, so don’t let working get in the way of your strike.

Here’s some ideas on how worker bees can make the most of the day…

1. GO AFTER WORK – The simplest solution to not being able to get out of work for the General Strike is to join the action as soon as you can after work, or before if you work nights. Same goes for school. Check the schedule in your town and in most cases you’ll find that events are going on all day long. No need to explain your absence during the day for you are better later than never.

2. SPREAD THE WORD – Know someone with the day off? Make sure they know what’s going on. Post it on Facebook. Text it, tweet it, reddit it, digg it, pin it, whatever. Scream it out the window. Work the word ‘occupy’ into any conversation you can and then speaking of ask, “Did you hear about the General Strike today?”

3. INVITE YOUR CO-WORKERS – If you detect any interest as you spread the word, let them know you are dropping by after work and invite them along. Not everyone knows what going to a march or rally is like and might be interested but anxious. More will make it merrier.

4. OCCUPY YOUR CUBE – Print out a few posters from Occuprint, crank up a live stream and your striking day can begin at 9am. Looks like you’ve got eight hours to brainstorm the perfect sign and a captive audience to test them out on. Hello, supply closet!

5. OCCUPY THE WATER COOLER – Everyone loves a good office joke and it’s the perfect cover for turning your office into the next encampment. Start with a funny little sign for your water cooler or coffee machine. If it’s well received, spend the day seeing how far you can go with it. You know, for fun.

6. INTER-OFFICE MARCH – Go big with signs, chants and a consensus-established parade route or orchestrate a coincidental moment in time where everyone just happened to want coffee at once.

7. LUNCH HOUR OCCUPATION – If you work close to the action, get yourself and your crew out into it for a long lunch. If you don’t, eat outside the nearest bank. Bring lunch from home for bonus points.

8. THE IT’S OCCUPIED – For all those whose workplaces won’t tolerate monkey business nor talk of strikes, you’ve still got options. The bathroom is humanity’s most tried-and-true refuge. You could go old school and write something on the wall or just hang out for a while with the paper. Oh yeah, it’s occupied.

9. OCCUPY THE COPIER – To add a little mystery to the day, take your favorite poster from Occuprint and leave it in the copy machine for someone else to find. Also good for printers though be mindful if everyone on the network will know it was you.

10. THE PRE-OCCUPY – If you really had your heart set on striking and can’t let it go, try distracting yourself and your colleagues with links to the most draining websites you’ve ever found. Nothing torpedoes a work day like addictive games such as Desktop Tower Defense or cool Tumblrs like AwesomePeopleHangingOutTogether.

11. DONATE – Since you’re spending the day earning, consider giving a bit to your local Occupy or any Occupy you hear about having trouble with the police. Legalfunds are being raised to help folks who get arrested and you’ll sleep like a champ at night knowing you helped someone get out of a holding cell quicker.

Got other ideas? Please share your own in the comments.
Got something going in your office? Please share that too.